FOX News Channel’s The Five marked their 2nd highest rated show with viewers 25-54 since launch on 7/11/11 drawing 481,000 and 1.8 million in total viewers. According to Nielsen, The Five – a program nearly six months old beat four networks combined in the demo: CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and HLN. See attached for excel sheet.

The Five’s highest rated show was on 11/8/11, but the show only aired for 21 minutes due to Herman Cain’s PC.

Growing Pains actor Kirk Cameron spoke with MSNBC’s Martin Bashir Thursday, live from CPAC promote his new documentary Monumental, a “search for the real treasure of America” and how faith is its guiding principle.

The Morning Joe team continued its ongoing discussion on the White House’s controversial — and, now, changing — birth control mandate, with host Joe Scarborough urging people not to turn an issue about government interference in religion into a discussion on contraception. This debate, he told his colleagues, is farther-ranging than a specific health care issue.

A mere minutes after Donald Trump had gone through the many, many ways he thought Rick Santorum was a loser on Fox News, over at MSNBC, he found himself on the receiving end of the same. It is no big secret that Lawrence O’Donnell isn’t a huge fan of Trump, but what may be news delivered by O’Donnell is his belief that Mitt Romney, Trump’s candidate in the Republican primary, thinks Trump is “a buffoon, and unconfirmable joke, America’s biggest loser.”

Ed Schultz began something of a feud with Sean Hannity, again, yesterday as the Fox News host had commented that he believed that Osama bin Laden would still be alive and kicking had President Obama “gotten his way.” Naturally, these comments incensed Schultz and led him to a discussion with Hannity over Twitter which resulted in Schultz challenging Hannity to produce any evidence that supported him.

Yesterday on The Five, Dana Perino made the bizarre claim that M.I.A. wasn’t American enough to perform in the Super Bowl Halftime Show unlike such American luminaries as, I guess, The Who, The Rolling Stones, and Madonna’s accent. Obviously, Perino’s allegation was borderline laughable and easy to make fun of (seriously, if I didn’t have to leave the office early yesterday, Frances never would have gotten a chance at this post), so you know what that means; set the timer for a rival cable network to mock it. And…take it away Ed Schultz!

Former RNC chairman Michael Steele, for one, believes laws concerning gay marriage should be discussed and decided at a local level. Panelist John Heilemann then asked Steele what he thought about the fact that, at one point, local standards held that it was unacceptable for black men to marry white women. Steele rejected the comparison.

On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski continued to tackle the controversial birth control mandate that has many religious groups and institutions — such as the Catholic Church — speaking out against it.

Like many people, Lawrence O’Donnell expressed his disgust today at a Republican ad by candidate Pete Hoekstra depicting a Chinese woman thanking his congressional opponent for making China strong. O’Donnell did not bother too much with attacking Hoekstra or the Republicans, however, and instead went after the young actress in the ad, calling for actors to take a vow of “simple decency” and boycott these ads.

Jane Velez-Mitchell‘s HLN show, which airs at 7 p.m., ended an era Friday night, as it was the last time “Issues” was used in the title. Starting Monday, it will simply be known as Jane Velez-Mitchell. On her final night with “Issues,” Velez-Mitchell pulled in 74,000 viewers in the 25-54 year-old demo, and 272,000 overall. [...]

It’s been a rough couple of years for Bishop Eddie Long. The senior pastor of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia spent parts of 2010 and 2011 facing down lawsuits from young men alleging that he coerced them into sexual acts. Long denied the allegations but the church settled the suits out of court and, shortly thereafter, his wife filed for divorce. Clearly, this is a guy in need of a new beginning. However, if you take him at his word, he appears to have chosen the wrong guy to show him how to do it.

Basically, going in front of your parishioners, being enshrouded in a sacred Jewish text, and declared king is not the way to get people on your side.

Mitt Romney surrogate and former New Hampshire governor John Sununu went head-to-head with Newt Gingrich campaign adviser Bob Walker on MSNBC Monday morning as the two disagreed on the state of the ongoing GOP race.

On Monday, the Morning Joe crew had something of a personal discussion on the White House’s new birth control mandate, which holds that most employers would have to include contraceptives in their health insurance coverage, regardless of whether that employer happens to be a religious institution. The Catholic Church in particular has been vocal about its opposition to the mandate.

Appearing on MSNBC’s Martin Bashir Friday afternoon, Goldie Taylor and S.E. Cupp shared their thoughts on what was next in the GOP nomination battle and the negative campaigning to come. Mitt Romney‘s gaffe-laden week drew host Martin Bashir’s attention. “I guess this week is going to be defined for Mitt by his appalling singing voice and his views on the poor,” Bashir observed. “The way Mitt Romney sounds, I don’t want to be anywhere near his fruited plain!” Taylor exclaimed.

Matthew Bowman, author of The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith, stopped by the set of Morning Joe Friday to discuss a faith that — thanks to Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman and such pop culture phenomena as the “Book of Mormon” musical — has found itself increasingly part of the national discussion.

Is this GOP race as good as over? That’s what Friday morning’s episode of Morning Joe sought to find out. Also… is Newt Gingrich a post-apocalyptic cyborg from the future?

On Friday, the Morning Joe team once again tackled the question of whether a certain GOP candidate is just a little bit socially awkward, or just a little at a loss when it comes to relating to others. Mika Brzezinski referred to a New York Times piece by Frank Rich, where Rich notes that Romney’s attempts at small talk “famously take the form of guessing a voter’s age or nationality (usually incorrectly) or offering a greeting of ‘Congratulations!’ for no particular reason.”

Lawrence O’Donnell fiercely lambasted Donald Trump‘s endorsement of Mitt Romney on Thursday night’s edition of The Last Word. “Every single word that Donald Trump says publicly, every word, is designed to get attention to him so that he can pump up the ratings of his TV show,” O’Donnell jabbed. “…Because unlike Mitt Romney, Donald Trump still has to work for a living, and he so desperately needs the couple of million dollars that he makes on TV that he must spend his life promoting his show…

Susan G. Komen founder Nancy Brinker stopped by MSNBC Thursday to discuss the specifics of and the reaction to news that the organization would cut its funding for Planned Parenthood’s screening and treatment initiatives. Brinker, speaking with Andrea Mitchell — herself a breast cancer survivor who has participated in Susan G. Komen’s “Race for the Cure” — was asked whether a controversial hiring within the organization might have had an impact in its decision.

MSNBC host and author Dylan Ratigan visited Morning Joe on Thursday, giving his two cents on Mitt Romney‘s recent comments about keeping his focus on the middle class and not being “very concerned about the poor,” and on Romney in general.

New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer appeared on Thursday’s Morning Joe to discuss his efforts in reining in the amount of corporate money spent on political campaigns.

Host Mika Brzezinski started things off by noting that Schumer’s colleagues in the National Republican Senatorial Committee “point out you are the number one recipient of Wall Street money in the Senate, and it’s funny you’re decrying the role of corporate money in the political process.”

In an interview with MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, Gasland director Josh Fox publicly responded to being forcibly ejected from a hydrofracking hearing in Congress Wednesday. “I didn’t expect to be arrested for documentary filmmaking and journalism on Capitol Hill,” Fox told Schultz. “I was prepared for it but didn’t expect it. I did think they would come to our senses and let them film the hearing. We were there covering a very crucial hearing about a case of groundwater contamination in Pavilion, Wyoming, 3 1/2 year investigation by the EPA shows subjects from the first film from Pavilion, with groundwater contamination resulting in 50 times the level of benzene in groundwater and EPA pointed in this case that hydraulic fracturing is the likely cause. What was happening today, Republicans called in the Science, Space and Technology Committee to a hearing to challenge science. Their panel was made up of gas industry lobbyists. We were there to expose what I believe is ugly and brazen attack on science itself, on what is happening across the country, with hydraulic fracturing. We were there doing our jobs.”

Jesse Jackson, Sr. is worried for the safety of the President. The Reverend made his way to Martin Bashir‘s show today, where he was asked to comment on Republican disrespect of the president. And while the conversation began on the topic of acceptable political discourse, literally within the same sentence Jackson turns around and warns of the possibility that “somebody shoots an AK-47 in the White House.” Huh?

Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) stopped by MSNBC yesterday, where he weighed in on Rep. Allen West‘s recent comments urging President Obama and other Democratic leaders to take their message “to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.”

Meghan McCain stopped by MSNBC to chat with Thomas Roberts about, among other things, Game Change, the upcoming HBO movie based on a book that professes to offer a deeper look behind the scenes of the 2008 McCain / Palin campaign.